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Showdown: Parallels Desktop 8 vs. VMware Fusion 5

Windows 8 in a VM: Parallels Desktop 8 vs. VMware Fusion 5

Windows 8 compatibility is clearly the feature being touted by both company's PR. This doesn't mean that Win 8 won't run in earlier versions, it just means that it's "supported." This is a gray-zone marketing term that is equal parts friendly and deceptive. Anyway, if you are planning to run Windows 8, it's a good idea to get full support for it in your VM host since it has support for newer technology like USB 3 that could need specific tuning and updates.

While Windows 8 isn't out until the end of October, the public betas and RTM build give a clear picture of the full experience, so I'm not just winging it here—I'm running the RTM build in both. So, how do Parallels Desktop 8 and VMware Fusion 5 handle Microsoft's risky venture into a unified tablet and desktop OS? That's a tricky question.

The tough part: using Windows 8 without reviewing Windows 8

If you haven't been reading any of the previews or early reviews of Windows 8, here's a brief rundown of what's different about Redmond's latest OS: everything. Microsoft took a rather large blowtorch to the well-honed Windows 7 interface and attempted to merge the desktop and tablet version of Windows into a single experience. So, reviewing Windows 8 as an experience in a virtual machine is, in effect, reviewing Windows 8 versus 7 or earlier. I was on the fence about the upgrade myself, and this was my first chance to really kick the Win 8 tires. Let's look at how Parallels Desktop 8 VMware Fusion 5 handle the unique interface of Windows 8 and keep you productive while bridging the gap between OS X and Windows.

The Windows 8 Start Screen

In Windows 8, everything is ostensibly done from the Start Screen, a macro tile-set of information (weather, stocks, etc.) and applications. The classic Windows Start Menu is gone completely. Although there are plenty of third-party imitations springing up, those don't help with virtual machine integration. The Windows desktop is a sub-app within the new Windows 8 environment (formerly called Metro) but the desktop isn't reliably populated with shortcuts to apps. You are pretty much forced to approach tasks in Windows 8 from the Start Screen.

This has the potential to add another layer of interaction between you and your Windows applications and I found the Start Screen grid layout unhelpful, especially since it's not alphabetically ordered. In Parallels Desktop 8, the problem is compounded because all of your accessible Mac apps are added to that grid of Windows 8 programs. So the Start Screen becomes a giant array of aggregated apps you didn't know you had:

Enlarge/ Every app between two OSes in Windows 8's start screen shown in a fluid mix of recent-usage and non-alphabetical order within a grid layout. This is the worst launcher ever.

In my review of Parallels Desktop 7, I mentioned how integration of Windows apps into Apple's Launchpad was similarly clunky. These app-aggregation schemes might be useful to some people, but it's a huge waste of time to me.

Fortunately, both Parallels Desktop 8 and VMware Fusion 5 populate their own external application menu sets that let you avoid the Start Screen entirely. Parallels Desktop's is in the Dock and VMware Fusion's is the drop-down from the menu bar:

No irony here: the Windows 8 Start Menu that Windows users don't get.

Parallels' .app aliasing of Windows app also shows up in Alfred:

So these longstanding features are now essential, in my opinion, to avoiding the Start Screen completely and just getting to your Windows apps from within OS X.

Hot corners: a real problem for Window 8 in a VM

Another problem with Windows 8 as a virtual machine OS is that it relies heavily on hot corners to do things like access the Start Screen and the contextual desktop menu at the right (where search functions and Control Panels are accessed). I already have all my hot corners used by either Mission Control or Dragthing. So accessing Windows features means gingerly creeping toward the corner or using the Start Screen Window hotkey. Parallels PR told me they added a mechanism that slows the mouse movement when you're near these spots, but it didn't work for me. So Windows 8's hot-corners in Parallels Desktop 8 and VMware Fusion 5 are both equally unusable for me without changing my existing set-up:

So, if you're going to use Windows 8 hot corners, you'll need to reserve the top right and bottom left ones. The idea of changing years worth of ingrained hot-corner behavior doesn't appeal to me. Coincidentally, this was one of the things that really told me that Windows 8 is not for me.

Another thing to note is VMware Fusion 5 assigns the command key to the Windows key in Windows 8, so this lets you avoid the Start Screen hot-corner. But the side effect is that it also brings up the Start Screen every time you leave the app with command-tab. If you're planning to run Windows 8 in one of these apps, I recommend assigning a different hotkey to the Windows key for Start Screen access.

This wasn't the only case where running Windows 8 within a virtual machine was more efficient than within Windows 8 itself. Shutting Windows 8 while using the desktop environment or a Windows app is far easier to do from the Parallels and VMware menus. It's one click on the graceful "Shut Down" VM menu or six clicks and 15 seconds of waiting between an array of screens to do it within Win 8. (Yes, it's that bad). It took me around ten minutes to figure out the process within Windows and I saw one frustrated reviewer say it took him 30 minutes.